A man with intellectual disabilities was executed in the United States after refusing a last meal and just asking for a bottle of Sprite, it is reported.
A divided Supreme Court made a last ditch decision to execute Matthew Reeves, 43, at Holman Prison, in Alabama, on Thursday.
Reeves’ defence lawyers claimed the execution should not go ahead due to his intellectual disability that had also cost him the opportunity to choose a less “torturous” method of dying.
But two hours after the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to proceed with the execution and Reeves was pronounced dead at 9.24pm local time.
The execution began at 9.03pm after Reeves had turned down food and the opportunity to choose his final meal. Instead he just asked for a bottle of Sprite, reported AL.com.
Reeves also chose not to make any final comment.
In the execution room Reeves was seen to wince and look at the lethal injection put into his arm before laying back and closing his eyes.
A prison official carried out a consciousness test that included pinching his arm and Reeves stopped moving at around 9.15pm.
Reeves was sentenced to death for the November 27, 1996, murder of Willie Johnson in Dallas County, Alabama.
Mr Johnson had picked up 18-year-old Reeves among other people to give them a lift as they were on the roadside in Selma, it is reported. He was then robbed of $360 and died after being shot in the neck.
The question over Reeves’ intellectual capacity was at the centre of the defence’s case and why the execution had been delayed.
The Supreme Court decided to go ahead with the execution despite questions over Reeves’ intellect, his rights under a disability law and the method of killing him.
In 2018, Alabama inmates had the chance to choose between a lethal injection or nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method after the latter was approved - but Reeves didn’t even fill out the form to choose.
Alabama changed from electric chair to lethal injection in 2002 before nitrogen hypoxia was introduced as an option and Reeves’ lawyers claimed he didn’t understand the option open to him and received no support.
Defence lawyers said he had a language capability of a four-year-old.
After the execution Reeves' lawyer John Palombi reportedly stated: “It is disappointing and disheartening that the United States Supreme Court felt no need to explain its decision to permit the execution of Matthew Reeves, despite the opinions of two federal courts which had issued and affirmed an injunction against that execution.
“Matthew Reeves is unquestionably intellectually disabled and unquestionably functionally illiterate. The State’s own expert measured Mr. Reeves’ IQ as 68, well below the cut-off to determine mental disability.”
At the same time Commissioner John Hamm, on behalf of the family of Mr Johnson, said: “After 26 years, justice has finally been served."
